This Thursday, February 14th at 10:30 a.m. PST we are hosting an introductory Google Developers Live session with special guest Sebastian Thrun (Udacity's CEO). In this session we will tell you all about the content of the course and and we will answer your questions live. Make sure you add this live event to your calendar and tune in on Thursday: http://goo.gl/ffs8s (you can ask and vote for your questions there, too).

We have a series of exciting initiatives that we are organizing in parallel. First, we’ll be running a study group for the first several weeks of the course. The study group will be hosted at Google’s San Francisco office, and Colt, Peter, and Sean will be there to answer any questions you might have and to help you out with the course material. If you don’t live around San Francisco, or can’t make it for whatever reason, don’t worry, because we’ll be livestreaming and recording these study groups.

In addition to the study group, Udacity is also organizing an exciting contest focused around the course. The goal of this contest is to build your own game using the knowledge and skills you've gained from the course. You can sign up for the course here and tune into GDL on Thursday to find out more about it.

Peter Lubbers is a Program Manager on the Chrome Developer Relations Team, spreading HTML5 and Open Web goodness. He is the founder of the San Francisco HTML5 User Group--the world's first and largest HTML5 meetup with over 6,000 members. Peter is the author of "Pro HTML5 Programming" (Apress) and, yes, his car's license plate is HTML5!